Last week I had a discussion with a person who believed that because a science fiction film said that dolphins use 30% of their brain, dolphins indeed use 30% of their brain and therefore more than humans with their 10%.
It felt a bit painful but it seem like the epistemic hygine of some people in our society is very poor. Various producers of TV shows might have more responsibility for not making facts up than they believe they have.
I sat next to person on a flight a few weeks ago who, upon talking about physics, said she thought the movie Interstellar was “amazing” and “scientific”. I agreed with her, thinking she was talking about the realistic black hole simulations. No, she was talking about scenes where the main character reaches back in time as a ghost to influence his daughter.
This person was a first-year Ph.D. student in medicine.
So yes, even when science fiction is done relatively carefully, some people will take as “scientific” the parts which have been stretched for better storytelling.
Epistemic hygiene can be a bit tricky with fiction that gets it right on something and blatantly gets it wrong on other things, but the blame I believe has to be put on the education system that fails abismally in teaching critical thinking, rather than upon writers who fail at fact-checking.
The issue isn’t that writers don’t fact check but that they purpusefully make up facts to make their story “better”. Those facts then get accepted as true by many people.
Last week I had a discussion with a person who believed that because a science fiction film said that dolphins use 30% of their brain, dolphins indeed use 30% of their brain and therefore more than humans with their 10%.
It felt a bit painful but it seem like the epistemic hygine of some people in our society is very poor. Various producers of TV shows might have more responsibility for not making facts up than they believe they have.
(Spoilers for Interstellar)
I sat next to person on a flight a few weeks ago who, upon talking about physics, said she thought the movie Interstellar was “amazing” and “scientific”. I agreed with her, thinking she was talking about the realistic black hole simulations. No, she was talking about scenes where the main character reaches back in time as a ghost to influence his daughter.
This person was a first-year Ph.D. student in medicine.
So yes, even when science fiction is done relatively carefully, some people will take as “scientific” the parts which have been stretched for better storytelling.
Epistemic hygiene can be a bit tricky with fiction that gets it right on something and blatantly gets it wrong on other things, but the blame I believe has to be put on the education system that fails abismally in teaching critical thinking, rather than upon writers who fail at fact-checking.
The issue isn’t that writers don’t fact check but that they purpusefully make up facts to make their story “better”. Those facts then get accepted as true by many people.