6 ms·

Are you stuck in movie logic?

239 points by eatitraw 11mo ago

gota 11mo ago
> Or: Good Will Hunting. The entire movie feels like it could’ve been skipped if literally any emotionally intelligent person said to Matt Damon’s character: “I feel like you have a tremendous amount of intellectual potential that you’re wasting here — why are you getting in fights rather than trying to do something interesting?” This person did not watch Good Will Hunting. I'm not a fan of the film, I just know for a fact several characters do this at several times. That is, y'know, the plot. I haven't read further enough to discern whether this is AI slop, but it doesn't look promising.
- phyzix5761 11mo ago
  With the amount of em dash usage it probably could be AI slop.
  - scott_w 11mo ago
    Even if it's not, it's still total garbage. It reads like the Critical Drinker screaming "if only these people put their emotions and flaws to one side and behaved like completely rational beings with perfect information!"
    - stray 11mo ago
      I heard the Critical Drinker's voice while reading that.
- tailspin2019 11mo ago
  FWIW I don’t get the “AI slop” spidey-sense when reading this, despite the liberal use of em dashes. I thought it was well written and makes some interesting points.
- corry 11mo ago
  In fact, the entire movie's point is that simply HEARING others tell you those things doesn't do anything! The inner journey of the character getting to a place where he believes it himself -- or rather believes himself to be worthy of a greater path -- is THE crucial part. So the example is exactly opposite the author's intent. That said, I liked the article and agree with its point. In fact, I'd guess that effective leaders all have learned techniques and ability to remain calm/comfortable in having these blunt conversations that cut to the chase (but still value and hear people).
  - techblueberry 11mo ago
    Ultimately I think it’s not really about going to far in one way or the other. I tend to be very blunt in my dealings with people to a fault. I wouldn’t say I’m mean, but like, in order for blunt truths to be effective I think they have to be somewhat rare, so I’m trying to adapt to be more strategic in my bluntness, but most of the time, let things go and maybe subtly steer rather than just calling things out all the time.
kykat 11mo ago
People always ask for feedback, but I haven't met anybody that can actually take it. Most people just don't want to hear, don't want to know. And people know it, so people don't say what they think.
- Razengan 11mo ago
  It's about "investment": People spend a lot of time, consciously on purpose or implicitly as a matter of consequence, on making up their plans & preferences. They've been building up mental velocity to whatever they're going to do. When you give them a contradictory opinion or advice, you're asking them to discard that investment and abruptly switch directions. Instead of asking them to drive off their mental road and into the dirt or turn around, offer them something akin to a rail track that they can gradually/subtly switch onto. Figure out the right "prompt" for them :)
  - vunderba 11mo ago
    To put it a bit more succinctly - the sunk cost fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect
  - NebulaStorm456 11mo ago
    I gave an advice to my friend who is doing a startup. I told him it probably won't work out. But we continue with our own line of thinking because the outcome totally depends on reality. Also, my friend can tack on lot of ifs later on (if only this and this and this had happened, I would be successful) to "prove" himself right. It might be possible that with no decisive outcome favoured by reality, we would both continue to be right in our heads.
    - Razengan 11mo ago
      In situations like that, sometimes people just want to TRY, whether or not they succeed, even if they expect it to fail. The act of trying is what matters to them. Pursuing potential romantic partners or starting software projects are some prime examples :')
xd1936 11mo ago
This article should be included in every Professional Development program. This is excellent advice. I live in an area of the midwest United States where nearly _everybody_ is kind, but severely conflict averse... To the point where it becomes difficult to gauge true intentions. Lack of clarity on everybody's priorities make work far more difficult than it needs to be because everyone here are people pleasers who don't know how to say "no" or "I don't like that".
- dfxm12 11mo ago
  I tell my managers "no". I tell them why: this process doesn't scale with the team, the security policy forbids it, this is the fifth project you've given top priority to this week, etc. They say, don't worry, just do it. I'm at a point where saying no doesn't matter, so I have to consider if I should even bother.
  - coldtea 11mo ago
    In software companies priorities mean nothing, they're there to check a checkmark that "we also have prioritization". Anything they want to have will be "top priority" even if they have 50 "top priority" deliverables this release. What actually prioritizes things is actual friction: from stuff actually taking time to make, to things falling apart and needing time to repair, to employees unionizing and refusing endless overtime. And anything else (scalability, policy, etc) is also irrelevant, when it comes to "the customer/CEO/higher manager wants this". People are not actually hired to make the product better, or to follow policies. They work to do what the company higher ups want them to do - the rest is up to them to try to fit under those contraints.
    - freehorse 11mo ago
      Not just in software companies ime.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- memfd 11mo ago
everdrive 11mo ago
This really interesting, and I first observed this with the movie the Matrix. Not so much that the conflict couldn't be resolved. (although the Oracle's entire character is based on this idea) But instead, if I were really on the Nebuchadnezzar I would have wanted to have hours-long conversations with Neo about the nature and limitations of his powers. The crew is faced with a deistic and perhaps apocalyptic super hero on their crew. They might be witnessing the end times! And NO ONE digs into this for more details? When I was younger this frustrated me, but as I got older I realized this was a reflection of normal human psychology. People avoid interesting topics all the time. "Why did you cheat on your husband?" "How come you're depressed all the time?" "What do you do when no one is watching?" "Do you like your job?" etc ... all of these questions have pretty direct answers, but it seems like people will do almost anything to avoid speaking about uncomfortable topics directly. It's still not something I fully understand, but it's something I've at least made some peace with. It's human nature, for better or (usually) for worse.
- eslaught 11mo ago
  It's because if you explain what's going on, you stop the action. And viewers/readers don't like that. In fiction it's called an info dump. As an aspiring science fiction author, virtually every beta reader I've had has told me they don't like them. I want my fiction to make sense, but you have to be subtle about it. To avoid readers complaining, you have to figure out how to explain things to the reader without it being obvious that you're explaining things to the reader, or stopping the action to do it. Movies are such a streamlined medium that usually this gets cut entirely. At least in books you can have appendices and such for readers who care.
  - everdrive 11mo ago
    Yep, I totally get it, and my initial observation was made when I was maybe 17 or so. Sometimes these topics do get put into movies, such as the sequence in Shazam where they test his newly-found powers -- but even that was played more for laughs and was really just an entertaining way to acknowledge that much of the audience probably never heard of Shazam.
  - 11mo ago
coldtea 11mo ago
The problem is being told those things (e.g. the examples in TFA from Lala Land, Good Will Hunting, etc) often accomplishes nothing. If anything, being told about such issues, even softly and subtly, will make people recoil, be offended, double down, or deny them. It's only when push comes to shove, or when you get a bitter reality lesson, that you can understand them, or that you can accept and benefit from being told such advice.
- techblueberry 11mo ago
  Yeah, I think the point this article is trying to make is somewhat interesting, and I do try to do this in my life, but the analogy their trying to make is actually I think the opposite of what they present. The point of Good Will Hunting is how hard what they’re trying to do is, that despite being confronted with “the problem” repeatedly Will needed some other life experience to snap him out of himself. And actually by the end of Good Will Hunting, I think what you realize is that everyone was wrong. That what Will was looking for was someone who could look past the surface conflict and love him for something deeper, and really simpler. I don’t think she needed him to be a genius the way his teacher tried to use him for that, and neither really did Robin Williams. And in this I think movie logic is in some ways correct, that people often have to have experiences to make real change happen. Maybe this is about deep truths vs shallow truths. “Hey it seems like there’s beef between us, is a shallow truth (for a relationship without years of history, if it’s father/son after 30 years of beefing, same applies?) Just addressing it is fine. “Hey, I think you’re not achieving your life purpose” is a deep truth. You can’t just tell someone what their purpose is.
- andrewflnr 11mo ago
  Yeah, while it can be a cheap plot device, it's also largely an accurate depiction of what it takes for real humans to change. Lots of teachers have told their students that they have lots of potential and shouldn't be getting fights. But if that student is getting in fights, it's not because no one ever told them it's dumb and this one line will be the great revelation they need, it's because they have deeper problems in their life.
- dominicrose 11mo ago
deleted 11mo ago
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ghusto 11mo ago
Fully behind his argument, but boy did he pick a bad example with Good Will Hunting: > “I feel like you have a tremendous amount of intellectual potential that you’re wasting here — why are you getting in fights rather than trying to do something interesting?” Nobody said that because that was his whole problem, that he _couldn't_ go there. That was his entire character!
raldi 11mo ago
I think Roger Ebert had a quote about movies where the problem could be resolved if the audience could shout one sentence to the characters.
- wmeredith 11mo ago
  Ebert called this "Idiot Plot"
acephal 11mo ago
The famous French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan claimed that if everyone said exactly what needs be said, language wouldn't exist or something like that. I'd wager movies are a reflection of how our psyche works, including 'main character syndrome', omissions of causality for narrative coherency, etc.
- saghm 11mo ago
  I'm not sure I understand that quote. Doesn't language exist because there isn't any other way to say some things? How else would one say most things?
  - snypher 11mo ago
    Most things don't need to be said, like my comment. I could have just had a thought, and continued on with my day. I like this quote; Language, according to Lacan, is a process of speaking whereby one's history is made real.
amirhirsch 11mo ago
The phenomenon described in movies has a name called “Idiot Plot” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plot) an older term which Roger Ebert popularized. Feels missing from blogpost.
- stackedinserter 11mo ago
  But people still love movies where everyone is an idiot, like Jurrasic Park or Interstellar. I wonder if it then translates in their real life decisions.
  - saghm 11mo ago
    I haven't seen Interstellar, but to be fair to Jurassic Park, there's literally a character who tells everyone else that the park is a terrible idea, even if his "scientific" basis for it isn't very coherent. (He might still be an idiot in other ways; I haven't seen it in a while, but I think it's an overstatement to say it's about everyone being an idiot rather than some specific people with enough money to find enough other idiots to execute their vision).
    - ufmace 11mo ago
      Reminds me of the Oceangate disaster as proof that things at least that dumb can happen in real live involving substantial amounts of money. Including everyone who is actually an expert in the field telling them that this is idiotic and usually quitting.
  - Doxin 11mo ago
    I think the main crux is whether or not characters are believable idiots. I loved the first jurrasic park because while yes people are idiots, they are idiots for reasons people in real life are idiots too. It's well-motivated idiocy. I loathe the latest jurrasic park. There's no way a band of experienced mercenaries are that incompetent.
JohnMakin 11mo ago
Not sure how good of an example good will hunting is or if the author has seen that film - at least half of the movie and basically every supporting character is constantly telling him he can do better. It's one of the central themes!
- cestith 11mo ago
  There are also only certain ways each character can tell him those things without him shooting them down and shutting them out. Chuckie is a lot more free to talk to him about where he’s coming from and a lot more free to be blunt than his new math mentor. If we over-apply logic to human relationships and human experience without consideration for the depth and breadth of those in people’s lives, then we’re not actually being that logical in the end.
wmeredith 11mo ago
> Good Will Hunting. The entire movie feels like it could’ve been skipped if literally any emotionally intelligent person said to Matt Damon’s character: “I feel like you have a tremendous amount of intellectual potential that you’re wasting here — why are you getting in fights rather than trying to do something interesting?” Maybe I'm missing something but that's literally what everyone in the movie is telling Will. HIs best friend, his mentor, his girlfriend, his therapist. They all literally say this in some form during the movie. His character growth is believing it himself.
- mock-possum 11mo ago
  Yeah I’m pretty sure his girlfriend, best friend, and therapist all pretty much explicitly tell him that.
- gilleain 11mo ago
  "It's not your fault" (also the graph theory examples in the beginning are really simple. Good Will Hunting is not really great as a math movie. I preferred 'Proof' with Paltrow, Hopkins, etc)
- mrkiouak 11mo ago
  Yeah, not only are people doing this, but this is possibly one of the most common problems int he real world with real people. The blog post may have some helpful suggestions, but these descriptions seem to signal a really large "human people understanding" blind spot. The author's circle of friends may all be high EQ, well adjusted people, but this just isn't representative of the real world. (Which its fine to ignore, but don't pretend thats not the case!)
- bryanrasmussen 11mo ago
  they probably missed that little bit of the movie with the psychologist giving Will treatment to try to keep him from wasting his potential. Easy mistake to make.
  - mcv 11mo ago
    You know, I've been wondering why the Rebels in Star Wars don't just shoot down that Death Star, if that thing is such a problem.
TacticalCoder 11mo ago
> It’s the cheapest way to build effective drama, but if you don’t fully dissolve yourself in the movie logic, the whole time you want to scream, “can’t anyone just talk about what’s happening directly?!” Yup it's insane. At the end of a very long series of three movies I told my father: "OK so this all basically happened because the person who sent the letter considered the (snail) mail service to be flawless and didn't bother to make sure the recipient got the letter in the first place". Doesn't matter which (french) movies: some dumb plot where relatives don't know they're relatives because the only person who knew didn't bother to make sure the letter explaining they were relatives arrived. Not naming the movies otherwise we'll get nitpicking. TFA is right: it happens all the time in movie plots and really doesn't help with the suspension of disbelief.
JackFr 11mo ago
What the author ignores is speaking from the point of view of the omniscient observer these things seem obvious. But the characters, even if they were purely rational happiness optimizers, lack all the information the movie viewer has.
keiferski 11mo ago
Reading these examples, you might have noticed that it’s rare to hear people talk like this. I think there are a couple of reasons for that... I think it's even simpler: very few people actually have communication skills. Being able to formulate thoughts and communicate clearly is itself a difficult skill, and in the era of generating instantaneous ChatGPT articles and online-first social lives, no one is developing said skill - nor do they realize they're terrible at it. Or at least, they don't want admit it. Part of the reason movie logic seems illogical ("just say this and the problem is solved!") yet realistic is because we are looking externally at someone else's problems, and not our own. There was a good HN comment yesterday making this exact point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945216 The good news is: if you manage to develop communication skills, you'll be a step ahead of everyone else, especially as people become more reliant on AI chatbots to formulate their thoughts.
- collinmcnulty 11mo ago
  That comment is on a post by this same author, whose beat is that you can decide to make changes in your life whenever you want to. So definitely a lot of connection between the two ideas
  - keiferski 11mo ago
    That's funny, good catch. I didn't even notice.
aidenn0 11mo ago
The Good Will Hunting example is terrible, since it's clear that Will has been told this before the movie and was told this by at least 2 of the 5 therapists he saw before Sean...
catapart 11mo ago
The thing I love most about the "why am I not just saying the boring, clumsy thing I'm actually thinking, instead of assuming everyone already understands it" rabbit hole is that once you actually commit to it, everything becomes simpler and easier. It takes away the pretense of religion, or anything supernatural, and it relieves you of ever having to feel "smart" because you're always one saying the dumbest things, it's just that no one else was daring to say them (which, ironically, doesn't make people think you're dumb, it just makes them introspect about why you would "just SAY that"). Of course, once you circle around to realizing that most human interaction is dependent upon insinuation and assumption (and how that often helps), and that most movies (media, in general) is made for people who haven't figured out how to be a person yet by people who haven't figured out the kind of person they really want to be yet, it lessens the overall takeaways from it. But things are a lot simpler!
- phantasmish 11mo ago
  > it relieves you of ever having to feel "smart" because you're always one saying the dumbest things, it's just that no one else was daring to say them It’s actually had the opposite effect for me, of making everyone think I’m smarter. It turns out that a lot of the time when nobody was mentioning the “obvious” solution or how we would avoid the “obvious” problem, it wasn’t because I was too dumb or inexperienced to know the implicit answer… but because actually nobody else in the room found those obvious. They’d not noticed at all. You have to be careful with this, though. Nobody in management wants to hear why their process for collecting and/or analyzing “metrics” is flawed and renders the whole thing totally meaningless in ways that a slightly-bright high schooler who halfway paid attention is their science classes should be able to spot—in fact, the point was only to pretend to be “data driven”, not to do passable science (that’s way too expensive, companies are interested in doing it approximately never), in practically every case. All that stuff’s fake, and everyone’s just pretending it’s not, so pointing it out is gauche. Just nod along and don’t mention the blatant confounders that plausibly allow that the real trend line goes the other way. Or that to get a useful dataset they’ll need minimum two years of gathering data to even begin to draw conclusions… and we have not been collecting those data, so the timer starts now at best. Nobody cares, you’ve missed the point, which has nothing to do with actually learning things to guide decisions.
rdtsc 11mo ago
This can work on a feedback loop as well -- popular media is where young people learn how communication works. If they all watch the same "movie logic" scenarios, those scenarios are the only examples they have of how to behave. So while Hollywood writers may have just needed a mechanism to make the plot interesting, that pattern can become reality as well. It's a bit like people talking reading ChatGPT crap, will start talking and writing like ChatGPT.
tracker1 11mo ago
A better example might be The Acolyte, though it isn't a movie. The entire plot is based on a lack of communication. Not to mention being a pretty bad show all around.
- Rastonbury 11mo ago
  The fact that we had Andor and that garbage utterly baffles me
  - tracker1 11mo ago
    Too true. Andor was pretty great and definitely deserved more attention. I think the fan base has just been disappointed one too many times to take a chance.
karmakaze 11mo ago
I'd like this to be a Reddit post, and people reply with their successes and failures using the method(s). Might sound simple in theory, reality might get messy.
- Syntonicles 11mo ago
  I feel this inner conflict of yours could be resolved by posting to Reddit and asking for anecdotes.
crazygringo 11mo ago
> It’s the cheapest way to build effective drama, but if you don’t fully dissolve yourself in the movie logic, the whole time you want to scream, “can’t anyone just talk about what’s happening directly?!” > It’s my experience that movie logic is endemic in dysfunctional organizations, friendships, and marriages. This is why it's not the "cheapest" way to build drama -- as the author quickly admits, it's how most people actually are. We watch drama precisely because it teaches us how we can improve. We see a character who needs to grow, and either they don't and is a cautionary tale (and shows us what might happen to us if we don't), or they do (and shows us how we might improve our own lives if we learn the same lesson). Nothing about this post is wrong, exactly, but the problem of "walking around in a haze of denial" isn't something that you're going to fix with a blog post. This is a huge part of therapy -- talking about the issues you're facing, so your therapist can start to put together the patterns of what you're in denial about, and surface them to you so you can actually address them. But the whole point is, you generally can't do this yourself, because you're not seeing the patterns to begin with. You're so used to them, they're invisible. You can't do it by yourself, almost by definition. How can you fix the things your brain is hiding from you it just not seeing to begin with? So this post is on the right track, but the idea of trying to distill it down into three "tips" is about as simplistic as "Step 2: Draw the rest of the f***ing owl". They're not wrong, but learning to apply them properly can take years of work.
imgabe 11mo ago
This is one of those things that, for some people, will be simple but not easy. If you grew up with an emotionally erratic parent or caregiver, who might suddenly explode with anger at unpredictable times, that’s probably why you’re unwilling to bluntly address what should be simple issues. You were conditioned early on to think that anything that could possibly be conceived as critical would be met with anger and possibly violence. So you avoid exposing yourself to that risk. What you have to learn, and what this post is indirectly trying to tell you, is that’s not normal, and most people won’t react like that.
milesvp 11mo ago
What’s interesting about this, is there are actually game theoretic repercussions to what the author is expressing. By making implicit knowledge explicit it changes entire game trees. You no longer play the i think that he thinks that I think that he thinks… branch, and you are literally changing expected payouts as a result. Once I learned this, it changed how I live. Similar to the article, I’m much more likely to say out loud the thing that people are only thinking. It removes so many potential problems that create prisoners dilemma type payout stuctures that it rarely seems useful not to make things explicit.
- _def 11mo ago
  I think I've sort of come to this conclusion which gives myself more inner peace but I haven't exactly gotten better at communicating my thoughts, hence it feels like others often assume I'd "play" as most do, but in fact I'm not but just a bit weird and introverted. Any tips on this?
- csours 11mo ago
  > By making implicit knowledge explicit ... I feel like this translation is easier to misunderstand that it is to understand in many cases. I think the effort is still good, but I also feel like people give up after a few tries. I know I do - after the third re-phrasing or re-framing you have to let things settle. ---- Once someone is "grown up", no one can raise them again.
kakacik 11mo ago
> Have you ever noticed just how much of the drama in movies is generated by an unspoken rule that the characters aren’t allowed to communicate well? Instead of naming the problem, they’re forced to skirt around it until the plot makes it impossible to ignore. That's the core of most of real world issues be it at work or relationships of any type. I can also personally attest most of issues of any type in my megacorp are caused by bad communication. How many times you see a barely functional marriage where unspoken things hang around and one party is afraid to tell them to the other side, and subtle hints are ignored. How many folks from older generations had a good talk about their true sexual preferences for example. Some nationalities have issues speaking frankly, ie British circle around issues with too much politeness. Good luck getting any Indian (in India) telling you "no" or "I don't know" (spent so much time wandering in wrong directions in good ol' times before smart phones). Remove this issue and psychologists lose 95% of their work. Perfectly clear communication is an exception in this world. I'd say movies gradually found this topic since many people will find themselves in those movies and identify with struggles of protagonists. Then logically frequent ending resolving many if not all issues allows people to have a little dream of resolving stuff they struggle with (subconsciously or consciously) in their lives.
OutOfHere 11mo ago
There is another way to think about things, which is that people shouldn't have to talk so much unless say they're a part of a family. For people communication outside their family, there should be tighter contractual obligations that define interactions and expectations. To say it differently, define the smart contract that details the expected behavior! Everything else is then supposed to be mechanical. If one doesn't want to abide by the contract, one doesn't then get the associated payments or privileges!
ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago
I completely agree with the point, and I've made the same point myself. However, I think "good will hunting" is a bad example. > “I feel like you have a tremendous amount of intellectual potential that you’re wasting here — why are you getting in fights rather than trying to do something interesting?” There is a scene where they have this conversation without words. Robin Williams is asking him without spelling it out and Matt Damon understands what the question is and dances around it. They both know what they're talking about even if they don't put it into words. In the case of this specific movie the problem isn't communication, it's just that the main character is incapable of dealing with things inside him that he doesn't understand (aka "emotionally immature"). (well, that was my interpretation anyway).
- ATMLOTTOBEER 11mo ago
  I came to make this exact comment. While I agree with the author in general I think it’s not nearly so cut and dry that you should always say directly what you mean in order to communicate clearly.
- heresie-dabord 11mo ago
  > I think "good will hunting" is a bad example. Communication is important. But good, honest discussion is possible if people really want it. It's like bargaining/negotiation: if you really want to be at the table, you will stay at the table and try to understand the other people. Which bring us to the single most pernicious type of "movie logic" in real life: when we see people as enemies before trying to understand them.
- RaftPeople 11mo ago
  > the main character is incapable of dealing with things inside him that he doesn't understand Exactly. To get to the point where he can really believe that the abuse was "not his fault" requires time and effort. If the therapist had just told him that day 1 it would not have had the same effect.
- CobrastanJorji 11mo ago
  Doesn't the conversation also happen WITH words? Like Chuckie tells him quite directly in one of the best scenes in the film: "I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do fuckin' anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a fuckin' waste of your time."
jonathaneunice 11mo ago
Isn't this called "name it to tame it?" When you engage higher level cognitive functions it reportedly helps you escape predominantly emotional responses.
user68858788 11mo ago
I agree with this post, and suspect a lot of us will see the logic in approaching problems like this. However, this approach isn’t universal and should be used with caution. A head-on approach isn’t effective with a person who is conflict-avoidant. Any of the given examples, no matter how gentle the delivery, will be seen as a personal attack and cause to pull away.
justincarter 11mo ago
Interesting to read, but this is where movies are more "real" than true life - people can't verbalize their true feelings and need to experience or work through them in some way non-verbally. If you've seen any Kar-wai Wong movies, that's basically his whole filmography (In the Mood for Love, Chungking Express, etc.).
morsecodist 11mo ago
I see this advice a lot in various forms. I think people are probably too conflict averse on average so there is some merit to it but there are limits. I feel like there are a lot of times in my life where just moving on or being diplomatic has been the right call. The manager example is a good case study. There are a lot of examples here where there might be genuine repercussions for raising an issue with a manager. I wouldn't give this as blanket advice. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a simple rule about whether or not you should raise an issue and it needs to be decided case by case.
havblue 11mo ago
There was an anime called Marmalade Boy where I believe every plot involved people being unable to communicate. It had the central romance that was a "will they or won't they" plot... They liked each other but were usually incapable of talking about it. Then the subplots involved their friends who were constantly scheming to break them up. Which the central couple was also incapable of discussing or confronting. It gets worse when they mistakenly believe at the end of the series that they were siblings. Did they ask for clarification? Nope, not until maximum drama was extracted from each misunderstanding.
narag 11mo ago
I agree, but... Sometimes problems are real. That guy will never be my friend because he wants my position. That other guy is scared because he thinks my work is a threat to his silo, and he's right: the management is after him. No frank conversation is going to change those situations.
orblivion 11mo ago
I think part of the reason I'm "conflict averse" is that airing things out very often doesn't turn out like... well, like the movies. Sometimes the issue I have with someone is just "weird" and socially unacceptable to air out, or maybe the person doesn't turn out to be as reasonable or understanding as I hope they are. Or maybe after enough of these, it just becomes overwhelming to the other person.
deleted 11mo ago
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BiteCode_dev 11mo ago
"It's complicated" is probably the line I hate the most in movies for this very reason. It's lazy writing made vocal.
rayiner 11mo ago
> It’s the cheapest way to build effective drama, but if you don’t fully dissolve yourself in the movie logic, the whole time you want to scream, “can’t anyone just talk about what’s happening directly?!” People in real-world situations aren't exactly good at recognizing what's really happening, much less talking about it directly. Humans spend a lot of energy on self-deception, as well as lying to each other to reinforce everyone's respective delusions.
Animats 11mo ago
A related problem, which was mentioned somewhere on HN about a year ago, is that too many movies have a "chosen one" mindset. The entire Marvel Overextended Universe runs on this. They're all Chosen Ones. Real life does not work that way. Read biographies of famous people. Most of them involve grinding upward. (Trump is the counterexample. From zero to President. Nobody did that before. Every other president in the last century had some major public office first. This may be part of his appeal. He fits the model Hollywood teaches people to expect.)
nullc 11mo ago
This article is about movies skimping out on the communication skills of their characters as a narrative device-- it's a lot like the fact that many pre-cellphone movies would have been over in 60 seconds if only the characters had a cellphone. We live in a world with cellphones now, so they're usually expected in movies. We still don't live in a world where people know how to communicate. Movie logic-- or more generally "narrative bias"-- taints people's thinking in ways far beyond failures to communicate. I've encountered a lot of people who fall for scams or believe conspiracy theories for reasons that ultimately amount to "if life were a story, this is what would happen".
socalgal2 11mo ago
> Communication failures like these make for good storytelling ... No, they make for horrible story telling and make the movies feel fake and the conflicts contrived. It's bad lazy writing. Bad because it's fake. Lazy because the writer should have come up with an actually valid conflict. I'm not saying I agree with the examples though. I didn't feel Good Will Hunting nor La-La Land were examples of this personally.
- magarnicle 11mo ago
  It depends. TFA's Good Will Hunting example is good storytelling, because the whole point is that Will was not ready to hear that direct conversation. In fact, Ben Affleck's character basically says that to him at the end of the movie, when he has finally grown up enough to hear it. Bad examples include almost every episode of Friends, where all the drama is based on a stupid, unnecessary lie.
andybak 11mo ago
I'm getting slight "Is this your first day on Planet Earth?" vibes from this. They are pointing out something real and true and valid. And yet - they seem to think that just saying stuff out loud will fix things. I mean - yeah. Sometimes it might - but usually there's layers of scar tissue and pain and misunderstanding in the way. In fact - if there's one myth movies perpetuate, it's that of the "epiphany". Two characters finally name the thing, talk it though and there's permanent change. Permanent change is rare - more so permanent change precipitated by a single conversation.
- astura 11mo ago
  >In fact - if there's one myth movies perpetuate, it's that of the "epiphany". Two characters finally name the thing, talk it though and there's permanent change. >Permanent change is rare - more so permanent change precipitated by a single conversation. My mom loooooovves talking about problems. She uses talking as a replacement for doing. She thinks if she's address the issue through words she's solved it and doesn't have to change her awful behavior. She's "addressed" it in her mind so it's no longer a problem. She can't understand why nobody likes her.
trashface 11mo ago
Its certainly quaint and lucky to be able to solve problems that easily I suppose. I have 4 people in my immediate social orbit. Two of them have serious behavioral disorders - one has been in inpatient psychiatry (twice), the other has never sought any treatment and in fact denies she has any problems. Another has somewhat less severe behavioral disorders but much more serious physical problems. The last one is simply very old and has health problems. What is to be gained by "talking about the real problems" with this group? Pretty much nothing, because none of them can or will do anything about it. And the few times myself or someone else has brought up some problem directly, lets just say it didn't go well. As a meta comment I have yet to see a take from this author that didn't seem to have some pretty clear bubblethink behind it. Not great to be edging into an epistemology domain I associate with Bryan Caplan - like a person whose opinions you pretty much always want to invert to get at closer to the real truth.
duderific 11mo ago
I had a colleague who I sensed was giving me the cold shoulder. Just kind of cutting off attempts at friendly conversation, whereas before our relationship had been fine. As the author suggests, instead of just letting it fester, I caught him at an opportune moment and asked him if I had done anything to upset him (I suspected maybe a not-tactful-enough code review may have been the culprit.) He just denied that anything was wrong, other than that he wasn't sure how to relate to me because our circumstances are so different (I'm quite a bit older than him and have a family, although it hadn't been a problem before.) Unfortunately this interaction just made our relationship even more awkward, and it never recovered. He ended up leaving the company about six months later. In summation, simply getting things out in the open is not necessarily the cure-all the author suggests it is.
- WolfeReader 11mo ago
  I had something similar happen at a prior job. 1: Befriend one of the front-end developers 3: The dev stops talking to me, becomes a lot less happy overall 4: The dev quits In my case, what I didn't know about for a while was 2: The guy got put on a PIP for dubious reasons and got absolutely demoralized.
  - georgeecollins 11mo ago
    It's important to realize that other people may have something going on in their life that affects their mood and maybe their desire to be friends. If it is someone you know at work they may not be comfortable talking to you about the problem. I think you should always be friendly, but if someone isn't friendly back don't just assume its because of you.
- Yokolos 11mo ago
  I mean, if they'd been open to addressing the real problem, it could've worked. Otherwise the remaining solution would be to never try and to never know. Now you know there's nothing you could've done and the ball was solely in his court. You can't fix everything, but you can set things up so there's an opportunity for change.
- 11mo ago
frankfrank13 11mo ago
I like this post, ofc we could all benefit from direct, and vulnerable, conversations. But one thing I never understood, even through Brené Brown, is that this direct and vulnerable communication style leads to its own set of baggage, its own unspoken agreements about what something meant. > “I’ve been feeling a low-level tension between us, like maybe we’re quietly annoyed at each other but trying to stay polite. Is that just me?” I'm sure in many cultures, and in many friend groups, this would go over fine. If I said this to someone, they would go into shock. They're unspoken thought would be "wow if he's saying that to me, I must annoy the shit out of him". Maybe not! Maybe that's my own unspoken understanding! But I do think this leaves a "scar" even a small one. "Direct" conversations are not without their own damaging effects. I think part of my social contract is to "deal" with things silently. Maybe in other cultures that's not the case. If someone said that to me, I would be happy to have that conversation, but I would be on pins and needles around that person, and possibly overthinking how "annoying" I'm being, and I would have at least a small amount of resentment for the person saying it – "I have lots of friends I don't annoy, what's wrong with this person"
- frankfrank13 11mo ago
  Just to be pretentious, this also reminds me of a conversation in Infinite Jest, where the canadian and the american spy argue about whether its right to teach their young what right and wrong is, or whether its right to discover it. The example is eating candy. I think in the US, if you tell a kid not to eat candy, they will eat candy as soon as their guardian isn't watching. I'm not sure that's true elsewhere, for a myriad of reasons. By extension, if you tell me I'm annoying you, I might go through the motions of "repairing" the relationship, while I actually just distance myself. Ofc, that depends on who says it
pdpi 11mo ago
One of the most effective ways to see this at play is watching most recorded Let's Plays of Return Of The Obra Dinn. The game uses a couple of very "game logic" contrivances to enable the writing to focus on very organic, real world logic. Most deductions the game requires of you are straightforward enough that you could explain them to a random passerby, and they'd find it perfectly reasonable. It's absolutely mind-boggling how often people will say out loud what they (correctly) think the solution is, because it's a perfectly mundane day-to-day observation, then proceed to discard it because they expect the game to be engaging in trickery. At perhaps its most extreme, the very first vignette you witness has a guy banging on the Captain's cabin door, shouting "Captain, open up, or we'll take more than those shells", and the guy inside the cabin answering "you bastards may take exactly what I give you!" before opening the door and shooting the door-banging guy in the chest. I've seen people literally be unwilling to commit to the idea that the guy inside the cabin was, indeed, the ship's Captain.
stodor89 11mo ago
Pretty sure if someone went to the author and told her how to fix her life's problems, she won't react the way she expects Ryan Gosling or Matt Damon to.
renewiltord 11mo ago
I think a more common thing is people treating movies as real. “Gattaca explained why this is bad”. “Torment Nexus blah blah”.
ArtificeAccount 11mo ago
I have had friends fail to communicate in astounding ways. Once, four of us were planning to go somewhere. A friend suggested somewhere else, I and my other friend agreed, but the fourth friend was not presnet. I told my first friend to tell the one person who was not present about the change in plans. He asks why... I tell him, well, the other guy isn't going to know we changed plans because he isn't here. Basic communication goes a long way.
slappywhite 11mo ago
This advice sounds good on paper (or on Substack) but in reality any given verbal confrontation is a roll of the dice. I have tried what she's advocating many times over the years and on quite a few occasions the result was I was shut down and hard by the interlocutor. Other times, the interlocutor paid lip service to the point I brought up but slid right back into old/unhelpful patterns after we discussed it. Sometimes it created a much larger conflict than what had been brewing, and not one that ultimately got us to a better place (one time it almost caused a physical fight!). Often I regretted opening up the issue in the first place. My lesson is: Sure, don't be totally non-communicative about your issues but pick your entries as well as you can and be willing to guess that some are not worth it. And also know you'll often be wrong in your guesses. You can't really win this game.
- PleasureBot 11mo ago
  I can also say from personal experience this verbal confrontation like the author is suggesting can make innocuous situations devolve quickly. There was one guy in a friend group I had who I felt like I couldn't really connect with. He always seemed very awkward and only willing to engage in surface-level conversations with me compared to everybody else. I tried to (gently) ask him about it, basically like the author would suggest doing, and it turns out he did not feel like he was being awkward, surface-level, or failing to connect at all. He thought we had a real genuine, deep friendship. What I said really hurt him and there was a lot of hard feelings on his end. Needless to say we did not go back to being friends after that, and I ruined what could have been a good friendship if I had taken the time to reflect that maybe my interpretation of awkwardness or lack of connection was coming from me and not experienced by him. It can really hurt relationships to bring up things like this if it isn't experienced by the other person, it might be all in your head.
smeej 11mo ago
Most people are internally stuck in movie logic. They can't possibly be honest with other people because they can't bring themselves to be honest with themselves. Who wants to admit their problem with someone is that they see something in that person that they don't like in themselves and it's making them uncomfortable? Heck, if they could clear that up internally, there wouldn't be an external problem to resolve. I am extremely forthright and literal. I am the one you can count on to come out and just mention the elephant in the room and ask why people are acting weird around it. And I can assure you this does not work. There is an entire game of communication through social nicety that completely falls apart if you ask the question out loud. You either figure out how to play it and read between (all) the lines, or you end up the awkward weirdo because you won't just let people keep their useful fictions about their discomfort with themselves. And for all of you bristling at this, telling me it can't possibly be like that, that I'm judgmental for calling it exactly as I see it, that's exactly what I'm talking about. We all do this. We lie to ourselves because living with our self-contradictions is unpleasant. It's much easier to ostracize the person who brings that out into the open than it is to live with our internal inconsistencies.

239 points by eatitraw 11mo ago

gota 11mo ago

> Or: Good Will Hunting. The entire movie feels like it could’ve been skipped if literally any emotionally intelligent person said to Matt Damon’s character: “I feel like you have a tremendous amount of intellectual potential that you’re wasting here — why are you getting in fights rather than trying to do something interesting?” This person did not watch Good Will Hunting. I'm not a fan of the film, I just know for a fact several characters do this at several times. That is, y'know, the plot. I haven't read further enough to discern whether this is AI slop, but it doesn't look promising.

phyzix5761 11mo ago
With the amount of em dash usage it probably could be AI slop.
- scott_w 11mo ago
  Even if it's not, it's still total garbage. It reads like the Critical Drinker screaming "if only these people put their emotions and flaws to one side and behaved like completely rational beings with perfect information!"
  - stray 11mo ago
    I heard the Critical Drinker's voice while reading that.
tailspin2019 11mo ago
FWIW I don’t get the “AI slop” spidey-sense when reading this, despite the liberal use of em dashes. I thought it was well written and makes some interesting points.
corry 11mo ago
In fact, the entire movie's point is that simply HEARING others tell you those things doesn't do anything! The inner journey of the character getting to a place where he believes it himself -- or rather believes himself to be worthy of a greater path -- is THE crucial part. So the example is exactly opposite the author's intent. That said, I liked the article and agree with its point. In fact, I'd guess that effective leaders all have learned techniques and ability to remain calm/comfortable in having these blunt conversations that cut to the chase (but still value and hear people).
- techblueberry 11mo ago
  Ultimately I think it’s not really about going to far in one way or the other. I tend to be very blunt in my dealings with people to a fault. I wouldn’t say I’m mean, but like, in order for blunt truths to be effective I think they have to be somewhat rare, so I’m trying to adapt to be more strategic in my bluntness, but most of the time, let things go and maybe subtly steer rather than just calling things out all the time.

kykat 11mo ago

People always ask for feedback, but I haven't met anybody that can actually take it. Most people just don't want to hear, don't want to know. And people know it, so people don't say what they think.

Razengan 11mo ago
It's about "investment": People spend a lot of time, consciously on purpose or implicitly as a matter of consequence, on making up their plans & preferences. They've been building up mental velocity to whatever they're going to do. When you give them a contradictory opinion or advice, you're asking them to discard that investment and abruptly switch directions. Instead of asking them to drive off their mental road and into the dirt or turn around, offer them something akin to a rail track that they can gradually/subtly switch onto. Figure out the right "prompt" for them :)
- vunderba 11mo ago
  To put it a bit more succinctly - the sunk cost fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect
- NebulaStorm456 11mo ago
  I gave an advice to my friend who is doing a startup. I told him it probably won't work out. But we continue with our own line of thinking because the outcome totally depends on reality. Also, my friend can tack on lot of ifs later on (if only this and this and this had happened, I would be successful) to "prove" himself right. It might be possible that with no decisive outcome favoured by reality, we would both continue to be right in our heads.
  - Razengan 11mo ago
    In situations like that, sometimes people just want to TRY, whether or not they succeed, even if they expect it to fail. The act of trying is what matters to them. Pursuing potential romantic partners or starting software projects are some prime examples :')

xd1936 11mo ago

This article should be included in every Professional Development program. This is excellent advice. I live in an area of the midwest United States where nearly _everybody_ is kind, but severely conflict averse... To the point where it becomes difficult to gauge true intentions. Lack of clarity on everybody's priorities make work far more difficult than it needs to be because everyone here are people pleasers who don't know how to say "no" or "I don't like that".

dfxm12 11mo ago
I tell my managers "no". I tell them why: this process doesn't scale with the team, the security policy forbids it, this is the fifth project you've given top priority to this week, etc. They say, don't worry, just do it. I'm at a point where saying no doesn't matter, so I have to consider if I should even bother.
- coldtea 11mo ago
  In software companies priorities mean nothing, they're there to check a checkmark that "we also have prioritization". Anything they want to have will be "top priority" even if they have 50 "top priority" deliverables this release. What actually prioritizes things is actual friction: from stuff actually taking time to make, to things falling apart and needing time to repair, to employees unionizing and refusing endless overtime. And anything else (scalability, policy, etc) is also irrelevant, when it comes to "the customer/CEO/higher manager wants this". People are not actually hired to make the product better, or to follow policies. They work to do what the company higher ups want them to do - the rest is up to them to try to fit under those contraints.
  - freehorse 11mo ago
    Not just in software companies ime.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
memfd 11mo ago

everdrive 11mo ago

This really interesting, and I first observed this with the movie the Matrix. Not so much that the conflict couldn't be resolved. (although the Oracle's entire character is based on this idea) But instead, if I were really on the Nebuchadnezzar I would have wanted to have hours-long conversations with Neo about the nature and limitations of his powers. The crew is faced with a deistic and perhaps apocalyptic super hero on their crew. They might be witnessing the end times! And NO ONE digs into this for more details? When I was younger this frustrated me, but as I got older I realized this was a reflection of normal human psychology. People avoid interesting topics all the time. "Why did you cheat on your husband?" "How come you're depressed all the time?" "What do you do when no one is watching?" "Do you like your job?" etc ... all of these questions have pretty direct answers, but it seems like people will do almost anything to avoid speaking about uncomfortable topics directly. It's still not something I fully understand, but it's something I've at least made some peace with. It's human nature, for better or (usually) for worse.

eslaught 11mo ago
It's because if you explain what's going on, you stop the action. And viewers/readers don't like that. In fiction it's called an info dump. As an aspiring science fiction author, virtually every beta reader I've had has told me they don't like them. I want my fiction to make sense, but you have to be subtle about it. To avoid readers complaining, you have to figure out how to explain things to the reader without it being obvious that you're explaining things to the reader, or stopping the action to do it. Movies are such a streamlined medium that usually this gets cut entirely. At least in books you can have appendices and such for readers who care.
- everdrive 11mo ago
  Yep, I totally get it, and my initial observation was made when I was maybe 17 or so. Sometimes these topics do get put into movies, such as the sequence in Shazam where they test his newly-found powers -- but even that was played more for laughs and was really just an entertaining way to acknowledge that much of the audience probably never heard of Shazam.
- 11mo ago

coldtea 11mo ago

The problem is being told those things (e.g. the examples in TFA from Lala Land, Good Will Hunting, etc) often accomplishes nothing. If anything, being told about such issues, even softly and subtly, will make people recoil, be offended, double down, or deny them. It's only when push comes to shove, or when you get a bitter reality lesson, that you can understand them, or that you can accept and benefit from being told such advice.

techblueberry 11mo ago
Yeah, I think the point this article is trying to make is somewhat interesting, and I do try to do this in my life, but the analogy their trying to make is actually I think the opposite of what they present. The point of Good Will Hunting is how hard what they’re trying to do is, that despite being confronted with “the problem” repeatedly Will needed some other life experience to snap him out of himself. And actually by the end of Good Will Hunting, I think what you realize is that everyone was wrong. That what Will was looking for was someone who could look past the surface conflict and love him for something deeper, and really simpler. I don’t think she needed him to be a genius the way his teacher tried to use him for that, and neither really did Robin Williams. And in this I think movie logic is in some ways correct, that people often have to have experiences to make real change happen. Maybe this is about deep truths vs shallow truths. “Hey it seems like there’s beef between us, is a shallow truth (for a relationship without years of history, if it’s father/son after 30 years of beefing, same applies?) Just addressing it is fine. “Hey, I think you’re not achieving your life purpose” is a deep truth. You can’t just tell someone what their purpose is.
andrewflnr 11mo ago
Yeah, while it can be a cheap plot device, it's also largely an accurate depiction of what it takes for real humans to change. Lots of teachers have told their students that they have lots of potential and shouldn't be getting fights. But if that student is getting in fights, it's not because no one ever told them it's dumb and this one line will be the great revelation they need, it's because they have deeper problems in their life.
dominicrose 11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

ghusto 11mo ago

Fully behind his argument, but boy did he pick a bad example with Good Will Hunting: > “I feel like you have a tremendous amount of intellectual potential that you’re wasting here — why are you getting in fights rather than trying to do something interesting?” Nobody said that because that was his whole problem, that he _couldn't_ go there. That was his entire character!

raldi 11mo ago

I think Roger Ebert had a quote about movies where the problem could be resolved if the audience could shout one sentence to the characters.

wmeredith 11mo ago
Ebert called this "Idiot Plot"

acephal 11mo ago

The famous French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan claimed that if everyone said exactly what needs be said, language wouldn't exist or something like that. I'd wager movies are a reflection of how our psyche works, including 'main character syndrome', omissions of causality for narrative coherency, etc.

saghm 11mo ago
I'm not sure I understand that quote. Doesn't language exist because there isn't any other way to say some things? How else would one say most things?
- snypher 11mo ago
  Most things don't need to be said, like my comment. I could have just had a thought, and continued on with my day. I like this quote; Language, according to Lacan, is a process of speaking whereby one's history is made real.

amirhirsch 11mo ago

The phenomenon described in movies has a name called “Idiot Plot” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plot) an older term which Roger Ebert popularized. Feels missing from blogpost.

stackedinserter 11mo ago
But people still love movies where everyone is an idiot, like Jurrasic Park or Interstellar. I wonder if it then translates in their real life decisions.
- saghm 11mo ago
  I haven't seen Interstellar, but to be fair to Jurassic Park, there's literally a character who tells everyone else that the park is a terrible idea, even if his "scientific" basis for it isn't very coherent. (He might still be an idiot in other ways; I haven't seen it in a while, but I think it's an overstatement to say it's about everyone being an idiot rather than some specific people with enough money to find enough other idiots to execute their vision).
  - ufmace 11mo ago
    Reminds me of the Oceangate disaster as proof that things at least that dumb can happen in real live involving substantial amounts of money. Including everyone who is actually an expert in the field telling them that this is idiotic and usually quitting.
- Doxin 11mo ago
  I think the main crux is whether or not characters are believable idiots. I loved the first jurrasic park because while yes people are idiots, they are idiots for reasons people in real life are idiots too. It's well-motivated idiocy. I loathe the latest jurrasic park. There's no way a band of experienced mercenaries are that incompetent.

JohnMakin 11mo ago

Not sure how good of an example good will hunting is or if the author has seen that film - at least half of the movie and basically every supporting character is constantly telling him he can do better. It's one of the central themes!

cestith 11mo ago
There are also only certain ways each character can tell him those things without him shooting them down and shutting them out. Chuckie is a lot more free to talk to him about where he’s coming from and a lot more free to be blunt than his new math mentor. If we over-apply logic to human relationships and human experience without consideration for the depth and breadth of those in people’s lives, then we’re not actually being that logical in the end.

wmeredith 11mo ago

> Good Will Hunting. The entire movie feels like it could’ve been skipped if literally any emotionally intelligent person said to Matt Damon’s character: “I feel like you have a tremendous amount of intellectual potential that you’re wasting here — why are you getting in fights rather than trying to do something interesting?” Maybe I'm missing something but that's literally what everyone in the movie is telling Will. HIs best friend, his mentor, his girlfriend, his therapist. They all literally say this in some form during the movie. His character growth is believing it himself.

mock-possum 11mo ago
Yeah I’m pretty sure his girlfriend, best friend, and therapist all pretty much explicitly tell him that.
gilleain 11mo ago
"It's not your fault" (also the graph theory examples in the beginning are really simple. Good Will Hunting is not really great as a math movie. I preferred 'Proof' with Paltrow, Hopkins, etc)
mrkiouak 11mo ago
Yeah, not only are people doing this, but this is possibly one of the most common problems int he real world with real people. The blog post may have some helpful suggestions, but these descriptions seem to signal a really large "human people understanding" blind spot. The author's circle of friends may all be high EQ, well adjusted people, but this just isn't representative of the real world. (Which its fine to ignore, but don't pretend thats not the case!)
bryanrasmussen 11mo ago
they probably missed that little bit of the movie with the psychologist giving Will treatment to try to keep him from wasting his potential. Easy mistake to make.
- mcv 11mo ago
  You know, I've been wondering why the Rebels in Star Wars don't just shoot down that Death Star, if that thing is such a problem.

TacticalCoder 11mo ago

> It’s the cheapest way to build effective drama, but if you don’t fully dissolve yourself in the movie logic, the whole time you want to scream, “can’t anyone just talk about what’s happening directly?!” Yup it's insane. At the end of a very long series of three movies I told my father: "OK so this all basically happened because the person who sent the letter considered the (snail) mail service to be flawless and didn't bother to make sure the recipient got the letter in the first place". Doesn't matter which (french) movies: some dumb plot where relatives don't know they're relatives because the only person who knew didn't bother to make sure the letter explaining they were relatives arrived. Not naming the movies otherwise we'll get nitpicking. TFA is right: it happens all the time in movie plots and really doesn't help with the suspension of disbelief.

JackFr 11mo ago

What the author ignores is speaking from the point of view of the omniscient observer these things seem obvious. But the characters, even if they were purely rational happiness optimizers, lack all the information the movie viewer has.

keiferski 11mo ago

Reading these examples, you might have noticed that it’s rare to hear people talk like this. I think there are a couple of reasons for that... I think it's even simpler: very few people actually have communication skills. Being able to formulate thoughts and communicate clearly is itself a difficult skill, and in the era of generating instantaneous ChatGPT articles and online-first social lives, no one is developing said skill - nor do they realize they're terrible at it. Or at least, they don't want admit it. Part of the reason movie logic seems illogical ("just say this and the problem is solved!") yet realistic is because we are looking externally at someone else's problems, and not our own. There was a good HN comment yesterday making this exact point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945216 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945216 The good news is: if you manage to develop communication skills, you'll be a step ahead of everyone else, especially as people become more reliant on AI chatbots to formulate their thoughts.

collinmcnulty 11mo ago
That comment is on a post by this same author, whose beat is that you can decide to make changes in your life whenever you want to. So definitely a lot of connection between the two ideas
- keiferski 11mo ago
  That's funny, good catch. I didn't even notice.

aidenn0 11mo ago

The Good Will Hunting example is terrible, since it's clear that Will has been told this before the movie and was told this by at least 2 of the 5 therapists he saw before Sean...

catapart 11mo ago

The thing I love most about the "why am I not just saying the boring, clumsy thing I'm actually thinking, instead of assuming everyone already understands it" rabbit hole is that once you actually commit to it, everything becomes simpler and easier. It takes away the pretense of religion, or anything supernatural, and it relieves you of ever having to feel "smart" because you're always one saying the dumbest things, it's just that no one else was daring to say them (which, ironically, doesn't make people think you're dumb, it just makes them introspect about why you would "just SAY that"). Of course, once you circle around to realizing that most human interaction is dependent upon insinuation and assumption (and how that often helps), and that most movies (media, in general) is made for people who haven't figured out how to be a person yet by people who haven't figured out the kind of person they really want to be yet, it lessens the overall takeaways from it. But things are a lot simpler!

phantasmish 11mo ago
> it relieves you of ever having to feel "smart" because you're always one saying the dumbest things, it's just that no one else was daring to say them It’s actually had the opposite effect for me, of making everyone think I’m smarter. It turns out that a lot of the time when nobody was mentioning the “obvious” solution or how we would avoid the “obvious” problem, it wasn’t because I was too dumb or inexperienced to know the implicit answer… but because actually nobody else in the room found those obvious. They’d not noticed at all. You have to be careful with this, though. Nobody in management wants to hear why their process for collecting and/or analyzing “metrics” is flawed and renders the whole thing totally meaningless in ways that a slightly-bright high schooler who halfway paid attention is their science classes should be able to spot—in fact, the point was only to pretend to be “data driven”, not to do passable science (that’s way too expensive, companies are interested in doing it approximately never), in practically every case. All that stuff’s fake, and everyone’s just pretending it’s not, so pointing it out is gauche. Just nod along and don’t mention the blatant confounders that plausibly allow that the real trend line goes the other way. Or that to get a useful dataset they’ll need minimum two years of gathering data to even begin to draw conclusions… and we have not been collecting those data, so the timer starts now at best. Nobody cares, you’ve missed the point, which has nothing to do with actually learning things to guide decisions.

rdtsc 11mo ago

This can work on a feedback loop as well -- popular media is where young people learn how communication works. If they all watch the same "movie logic" scenarios, those scenarios are the only examples they have of how to behave. So while Hollywood writers may have just needed a mechanism to make the plot interesting, that pattern can become reality as well. It's a bit like people talking reading ChatGPT crap, will start talking and writing like ChatGPT.

tracker1 11mo ago

A better example might be The Acolyte, though it isn't a movie. The entire plot is based on a lack of communication. Not to mention being a pretty bad show all around.

Rastonbury 11mo ago
The fact that we had Andor and that garbage utterly baffles me
- tracker1 11mo ago
  Too true. Andor was pretty great and definitely deserved more attention. I think the fan base has just been disappointed one too many times to take a chance.

karmakaze 11mo ago

I'd like this to be a Reddit post, and people reply with their successes and failures using the method(s). Might sound simple in theory, reality might get messy.

Syntonicles 11mo ago
I feel this inner conflict of yours could be resolved by posting to Reddit and asking for anecdotes.

crazygringo 11mo ago

> It’s the cheapest way to build effective drama, but if you don’t fully dissolve yourself in the movie logic, the whole time you want to scream, “can’t anyone just talk about what’s happening directly?!” > It’s my experience that movie logic is endemic in dysfunctional organizations, friendships, and marriages. This is why it's not the "cheapest" way to build drama -- as the author quickly admits, it's how most people actually are. We watch drama precisely because it teaches us how we can improve. We see a character who needs to grow, and either they don't and is a cautionary tale (and shows us what might happen to us if we don't), or they do (and shows us how we might improve our own lives if we learn the same lesson). Nothing about this post is wrong, exactly, but the problem of "walking around in a haze of denial" isn't something that you're going to fix with a blog post. This is a huge part of therapy -- talking about the issues you're facing, so your therapist can start to put together the patterns of what you're in denial about, and surface them to you so you can actually address them. But the whole point is, you generally can't do this yourself, because you're not seeing the patterns to begin with. You're so used to them, they're invisible. You can't do it by yourself, almost by definition. How can you fix the things your brain is hiding from you it just not seeing to begin with? So this post is on the right track, but the idea of trying to distill it down into three "tips" is about as simplistic as "Step 2: Draw the rest of the f***ing owl". They're not wrong, but learning to apply them properly can take years of work.

imgabe 11mo ago

This is one of those things that, for some people, will be simple but not easy. If you grew up with an emotionally erratic parent or caregiver, who might suddenly explode with anger at unpredictable times, that’s probably why you’re unwilling to bluntly address what should be simple issues. You were conditioned early on to think that anything that could possibly be conceived as critical would be met with anger and possibly violence. So you avoid exposing yourself to that risk. What you have to learn, and what this post is indirectly trying to tell you, is that’s not normal, and most people won’t react like that.

milesvp 11mo ago

What’s interesting about this, is there are actually game theoretic repercussions to what the author is expressing. By making implicit knowledge explicit it changes entire game trees. You no longer play the i think that he thinks that I think that he thinks… branch, and you are literally changing expected payouts as a result. Once I learned this, it changed how I live. Similar to the article, I’m much more likely to say out loud the thing that people are only thinking. It removes so many potential problems that create prisoners dilemma type payout stuctures that it rarely seems useful not to make things explicit.

_def 11mo ago
I think I've sort of come to this conclusion which gives myself more inner peace but I haven't exactly gotten better at communicating my thoughts, hence it feels like others often assume I'd "play" as most do, but in fact I'm not but just a bit weird and introverted. Any tips on this?
csours 11mo ago
> By making implicit knowledge explicit ... I feel like this translation is easier to misunderstand that it is to understand in many cases. I think the effort is still good, but I also feel like people give up after a few tries. I know I do - after the third re-phrasing or re-framing you have to let things settle. ---- Once someone is "grown up", no one can raise them again.

kakacik 11mo ago

> Have you ever noticed just how much of the drama in movies is generated by an unspoken rule that the characters aren’t allowed to communicate well? Instead of naming the problem, they’re forced to skirt around it until the plot makes it impossible to ignore. That's the core of most of real world issues be it at work or relationships of any type. I can also personally attest most of issues of any type in my megacorp are caused by bad communication. How many times you see a barely functional marriage where unspoken things hang around and one party is afraid to tell them to the other side, and subtle hints are ignored. How many folks from older generations had a good talk about their true sexual preferences for example. Some nationalities have issues speaking frankly, ie British circle around issues with too much politeness. Good luck getting any Indian (in India) telling you "no" or "I don't know" (spent so much time wandering in wrong directions in good ol' times before smart phones). Remove this issue and psychologists lose 95% of their work. Perfectly clear communication is an exception in this world. I'd say movies gradually found this topic since many people will find themselves in those movies and identify with struggles of protagonists. Then logically frequent ending resolving many if not all issues allows people to have a little dream of resolving stuff they struggle with (subconsciously or consciously) in their lives.

OutOfHere 11mo ago

There is another way to think about things, which is that people shouldn't have to talk so much unless say they're a part of a family. For people communication outside their family, there should be tighter contractual obligations that define interactions and expectations. To say it differently, define the smart contract that details the expected behavior! Everything else is then supposed to be mechanical. If one doesn't want to abide by the contract, one doesn't then get the associated payments or privileges!

ekjhgkejhgk 11mo ago

I completely agree with the point, and I've made the same point myself. However, I think "good will hunting" is a bad example. > “I feel like you have a tremendous amount of intellectual potential that you’re wasting here — why are you getting in fights rather than trying to do something interesting?” There is a scene where they have this conversation without words. Robin Williams is asking him without spelling it out and Matt Damon understands what the question is and dances around it. They both know what they're talking about even if they don't put it into words. In the case of this specific movie the problem isn't communication, it's just that the main character is incapable of dealing with things inside him that he doesn't understand (aka "emotionally immature"). (well, that was my interpretation anyway).

ATMLOTTOBEER 11mo ago
I came to make this exact comment. While I agree with the author in general I think it’s not nearly so cut and dry that you should always say directly what you mean in order to communicate clearly.
heresie-dabord 11mo ago
> I think "good will hunting" is a bad example. Communication is important. But good, honest discussion is possible if people really want it. It's like bargaining/negotiation: if you really want to be at the table, you will stay at the table and try to understand the other people. Which bring us to the single most pernicious type of "movie logic" in real life: when we see people as enemies before trying to understand them.
RaftPeople 11mo ago
> the main character is incapable of dealing with things inside him that he doesn't understand Exactly. To get to the point where he can really believe that the abuse was "not his fault" requires time and effort. If the therapist had just told him that day 1 it would not have had the same effect.
CobrastanJorji 11mo ago
Doesn't the conversation also happen WITH words? Like Chuckie tells him quite directly in one of the best scenes in the film: "I mean, you're sittin' on a winnin' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do fuckin' anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in 20 years. Hangin' around here is a fuckin' waste of your time."

jonathaneunice 11mo ago

Isn't this called "name it to tame it?" When you engage higher level cognitive functions it reportedly helps you escape predominantly emotional responses.

user68858788 11mo ago

I agree with this post, and suspect a lot of us will see the logic in approaching problems like this. However, this approach isn’t universal and should be used with caution. A head-on approach isn’t effective with a person who is conflict-avoidant. Any of the given examples, no matter how gentle the delivery, will be seen as a personal attack and cause to pull away.

justincarter 11mo ago

Interesting to read, but this is where movies are more "real" than true life - people can't verbalize their true feelings and need to experience or work through them in some way non-verbally. If you've seen any Kar-wai Wong movies, that's basically his whole filmography (In the Mood for Love, Chungking Express, etc.).

morsecodist 11mo ago

I see this advice a lot in various forms. I think people are probably too conflict averse on average so there is some merit to it but there are limits. I feel like there are a lot of times in my life where just moving on or being diplomatic has been the right call. The manager example is a good case study. There are a lot of examples here where there might be genuine repercussions for raising an issue with a manager. I wouldn't give this as blanket advice. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a simple rule about whether or not you should raise an issue and it needs to be decided case by case.

havblue 11mo ago

There was an anime called Marmalade Boy where I believe every plot involved people being unable to communicate. It had the central romance that was a "will they or won't they" plot... They liked each other but were usually incapable of talking about it. Then the subplots involved their friends who were constantly scheming to break them up. Which the central couple was also incapable of discussing or confronting. It gets worse when they mistakenly believe at the end of the series that they were siblings. Did they ask for clarification? Nope, not until maximum drama was extracted from each misunderstanding.

narag 11mo ago

I agree, but... Sometimes problems are real. That guy will never be my friend because he wants my position. That other guy is scared because he thinks my work is a threat to his silo, and he's right: the management is after him. No frank conversation is going to change those situations.

orblivion 11mo ago

I think part of the reason I'm "conflict averse" is that airing things out very often doesn't turn out like... well, like the movies. Sometimes the issue I have with someone is just "weird" and socially unacceptable to air out, or maybe the person doesn't turn out to be as reasonable or understanding as I hope they are. Or maybe after enough of these, it just becomes overwhelming to the other person.

deleted 11mo ago

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BiteCode_dev 11mo ago

"It's complicated" is probably the line I hate the most in movies for this very reason. It's lazy writing made vocal.

rayiner 11mo ago

> It’s the cheapest way to build effective drama, but if you don’t fully dissolve yourself in the movie logic, the whole time you want to scream, “can’t anyone just talk about what’s happening directly?!” People in real-world situations aren't exactly good at recognizing what's really happening, much less talking about it directly. Humans spend a lot of energy on self-deception, as well as lying to each other to reinforce everyone's respective delusions.

Animats 11mo ago

A related problem, which was mentioned somewhere on HN about a year ago, is that too many movies have a "chosen one" mindset. The entire Marvel Overextended Universe runs on this. They're all Chosen Ones. Real life does not work that way. Read biographies of famous people. Most of them involve grinding upward. (Trump is the counterexample. From zero to President. Nobody did that before. Every other president in the last century had some major public office first. This may be part of his appeal. He fits the model Hollywood teaches people to expect.)

nullc 11mo ago

This article is about movies skimping out on the communication skills of their characters as a narrative device-- it's a lot like the fact that many pre-cellphone movies would have been over in 60 seconds if only the characters had a cellphone. We live in a world with cellphones now, so they're usually expected in movies. We still don't live in a world where people know how to communicate. Movie logic-- or more generally "narrative bias"-- taints people's thinking in ways far beyond failures to communicate. I've encountered a lot of people who fall for scams or believe conspiracy theories for reasons that ultimately amount to "if life were a story, this is what would happen".

socalgal2 11mo ago

> Communication failures like these make for good storytelling ... No, they make for horrible story telling and make the movies feel fake and the conflicts contrived. It's bad lazy writing. Bad because it's fake. Lazy because the writer should have come up with an actually valid conflict. I'm not saying I agree with the examples though. I didn't feel Good Will Hunting nor La-La Land were examples of this personally.

magarnicle 11mo ago
It depends. TFA's Good Will Hunting example is good storytelling, because the whole point is that Will was not ready to hear that direct conversation. In fact, Ben Affleck's character basically says that to him at the end of the movie, when he has finally grown up enough to hear it. Bad examples include almost every episode of Friends, where all the drama is based on a stupid, unnecessary lie.

andybak 11mo ago

I'm getting slight "Is this your first day on Planet Earth?" vibes from this. They are pointing out something real and true and valid. And yet - they seem to think that just saying stuff out loud will fix things. I mean - yeah. Sometimes it might - but usually there's layers of scar tissue and pain and misunderstanding in the way. In fact - if there's one myth movies perpetuate, it's that of the "epiphany". Two characters finally name the thing, talk it though and there's permanent change. Permanent change is rare - more so permanent change precipitated by a single conversation.

astura 11mo ago
>In fact - if there's one myth movies perpetuate, it's that of the "epiphany". Two characters finally name the thing, talk it though and there's permanent change. >Permanent change is rare - more so permanent change precipitated by a single conversation. My mom loooooovves talking about problems. She uses talking as a replacement for doing. She thinks if she's address the issue through words she's solved it and doesn't have to change her awful behavior. She's "addressed" it in her mind so it's no longer a problem. She can't understand why nobody likes her.

trashface 11mo ago

Its certainly quaint and lucky to be able to solve problems that easily I suppose. I have 4 people in my immediate social orbit. Two of them have serious behavioral disorders - one has been in inpatient psychiatry (twice), the other has never sought any treatment and in fact denies she has any problems. Another has somewhat less severe behavioral disorders but much more serious physical problems. The last one is simply very old and has health problems. What is to be gained by "talking about the real problems" with this group? Pretty much nothing, because none of them can or will do anything about it. And the few times myself or someone else has brought up some problem directly, lets just say it didn't go well. As a meta comment I have yet to see a take from this author that didn't seem to have some pretty clear bubblethink behind it. Not great to be edging into an epistemology domain I associate with Bryan Caplan - like a person whose opinions you pretty much always want to invert to get at closer to the real truth.

duderific 11mo ago

I had a colleague who I sensed was giving me the cold shoulder. Just kind of cutting off attempts at friendly conversation, whereas before our relationship had been fine. As the author suggests, instead of just letting it fester, I caught him at an opportune moment and asked him if I had done anything to upset him (I suspected maybe a not-tactful-enough code review may have been the culprit.) He just denied that anything was wrong, other than that he wasn't sure how to relate to me because our circumstances are so different (I'm quite a bit older than him and have a family, although it hadn't been a problem before.) Unfortunately this interaction just made our relationship even more awkward, and it never recovered. He ended up leaving the company about six months later. In summation, simply getting things out in the open is not necessarily the cure-all the author suggests it is.

WolfeReader 11mo ago
I had something similar happen at a prior job. 1: Befriend one of the front-end developers 3: The dev stops talking to me, becomes a lot less happy overall 4: The dev quits In my case, what I didn't know about for a while was 2: The guy got put on a PIP for dubious reasons and got absolutely demoralized.
- georgeecollins 11mo ago
  It's important to realize that other people may have something going on in their life that affects their mood and maybe their desire to be friends. If it is someone you know at work they may not be comfortable talking to you about the problem. I think you should always be friendly, but if someone isn't friendly back don't just assume its because of you.
Yokolos 11mo ago
I mean, if they'd been open to addressing the real problem, it could've worked. Otherwise the remaining solution would be to never try and to never know. Now you know there's nothing you could've done and the ball was solely in his court. You can't fix everything, but you can set things up so there's an opportunity for change.
11mo ago

frankfrank13 11mo ago

I like this post, ofc we could all benefit from direct, and vulnerable, conversations. But one thing I never understood, even through Brené Brown, is that this direct and vulnerable communication style leads to its own set of baggage, its own unspoken agreements about what something meant. > “I’ve been feeling a low-level tension between us, like maybe we’re quietly annoyed at each other but trying to stay polite. Is that just me?” I'm sure in many cultures, and in many friend groups, this would go over fine. If I said this to someone, they would go into shock. They're unspoken thought would be "wow if he's saying that to me, I must annoy the shit out of him". Maybe not! Maybe that's my own unspoken understanding! But I do think this leaves a "scar" even a small one. "Direct" conversations are not without their own damaging effects. I think part of my social contract is to "deal" with things silently. Maybe in other cultures that's not the case. If someone said that to me, I would be happy to have that conversation, but I would be on pins and needles around that person, and possibly overthinking how "annoying" I'm being, and I would have at least a small amount of resentment for the person saying it – "I have lots of friends I don't annoy, what's wrong with this person"

frankfrank13 11mo ago
Just to be pretentious, this also reminds me of a conversation in Infinite Jest, where the canadian and the american spy argue about whether its right to teach their young what right and wrong is, or whether its right to discover it. The example is eating candy. I think in the US, if you tell a kid not to eat candy, they will eat candy as soon as their guardian isn't watching. I'm not sure that's true elsewhere, for a myriad of reasons. By extension, if you tell me I'm annoying you, I might go through the motions of "repairing" the relationship, while I actually just distance myself. Ofc, that depends on who says it

pdpi 11mo ago

One of the most effective ways to see this at play is watching most recorded Let's Plays of Return Of The Obra Dinn. The game uses a couple of very "game logic" contrivances to enable the writing to focus on very organic, real world logic. Most deductions the game requires of you are straightforward enough that you could explain them to a random passerby, and they'd find it perfectly reasonable. It's absolutely mind-boggling how often people will say out loud what they (correctly) think the solution is, because it's a perfectly mundane day-to-day observation, then proceed to discard it because they expect the game to be engaging in trickery. At perhaps its most extreme, the very first vignette you witness has a guy banging on the Captain's cabin door, shouting "Captain, open up, or we'll take more than those shells", and the guy inside the cabin answering "you bastards may take exactly what I give you!" before opening the door and shooting the door-banging guy in the chest. I've seen people literally be unwilling to commit to the idea that the guy inside the cabin was, indeed, the ship's Captain.

stodor89 11mo ago

Pretty sure if someone went to the author and told her how to fix her life's problems, she won't react the way she expects Ryan Gosling or Matt Damon to.

renewiltord 11mo ago

I think a more common thing is people treating movies as real. “Gattaca explained why this is bad”. “Torment Nexus blah blah”.

ArtificeAccount 11mo ago

I have had friends fail to communicate in astounding ways. Once, four of us were planning to go somewhere. A friend suggested somewhere else, I and my other friend agreed, but the fourth friend was not presnet. I told my first friend to tell the one person who was not present about the change in plans. He asks why... I tell him, well, the other guy isn't going to know we changed plans because he isn't here. Basic communication goes a long way.

slappywhite 11mo ago

This advice sounds good on paper (or on Substack) but in reality any given verbal confrontation is a roll of the dice. I have tried what she's advocating many times over the years and on quite a few occasions the result was I was shut down and hard by the interlocutor. Other times, the interlocutor paid lip service to the point I brought up but slid right back into old/unhelpful patterns after we discussed it. Sometimes it created a much larger conflict than what had been brewing, and not one that ultimately got us to a better place (one time it almost caused a physical fight!). Often I regretted opening up the issue in the first place. My lesson is: Sure, don't be totally non-communicative about your issues but pick your entries as well as you can and be willing to guess that some are not worth it. And also know you'll often be wrong in your guesses. You can't really win this game.

PleasureBot 11mo ago
I can also say from personal experience this verbal confrontation like the author is suggesting can make innocuous situations devolve quickly. There was one guy in a friend group I had who I felt like I couldn't really connect with. He always seemed very awkward and only willing to engage in surface-level conversations with me compared to everybody else. I tried to (gently) ask him about it, basically like the author would suggest doing, and it turns out he did not feel like he was being awkward, surface-level, or failing to connect at all. He thought we had a real genuine, deep friendship. What I said really hurt him and there was a lot of hard feelings on his end. Needless to say we did not go back to being friends after that, and I ruined what could have been a good friendship if I had taken the time to reflect that maybe my interpretation of awkwardness or lack of connection was coming from me and not experienced by him. It can really hurt relationships to bring up things like this if it isn't experienced by the other person, it might be all in your head.

smeej 11mo ago

Most people are internally stuck in movie logic. They can't possibly be honest with other people because they can't bring themselves to be honest with themselves. Who wants to admit their problem with someone is that they see something in that person that they don't like in themselves and it's making them uncomfortable? Heck, if they could clear that up internally, there wouldn't be an external problem to resolve. I am extremely forthright and literal. I am the one you can count on to come out and just mention the elephant in the room and ask why people are acting weird around it. And I can assure you this does not work. There is an entire game of communication through social nicety that completely falls apart if you ask the question out loud. You either figure out how to play it and read between (all) the lines, or you end up the awkward weirdo because you won't just let people keep their useful fictions about their discomfort with themselves. And for all of you bristling at this, telling me it can't possibly be like that, that I'm judgmental for calling it exactly as I see it, that's exactly what I'm talking about. We all do this. We lie to ourselves because living with our self-contradictions is unpleasant. It's much easier to ostracize the person who brings that out into the open than it is to live with our internal inconsistencies.