Epistemic status: half joking, but also half serious. Warning: I totally wrote this.
Practical Rationality in John Carpenter’s The Thing: A Case Study
John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) is a masterclass in practical rationality, a cornerstone of effective decision-making under uncertainty—a concept deeply valued by the LessWrong community. The film’s narrative hinges on a group of Antarctic researchers encountering a shape-shifting alien capable of perfectly imitating its hosts, forcing them to confront dire stakes with limited information. Their survival depends on their ability to reason under pressure, assess probabilities, and mitigate catastrophic risks, making the movie a compelling example of applied rationality.
Key Lessons in Practical Rationality:
Updating Beliefs with New Evidence The researchers continually revise their understanding of the alien’s capabilities as they gather evidence. For instance, after witnessing the creature’s ability to assimilate and mimic hosts, they abandon naive assumptions of safety and recalibrate their strategies to account for this new information. This aligns with Bayesian reasoning: beliefs must be updated in light of new data to avoid catastrophic errors.
Decision-Making Under Uncertainty The characters face extreme uncertainty: anyone could be the alien, and any wrong move could result in annihilation. The iconic blood test scene exemplifies this. The test, devised by MacReady, is an ingenious use of falsifiability—leveraging empirical experimentation to distinguish humans from the alien. It demonstrates how rational agents use creativity and empirical tests to reduce uncertainty.
Coordination in Adversarial Environments Cooperation becomes both vital and precarious when trust erodes. The film explores how rational agents can attempt to align incentives despite an adversarial context. MacReady takes control of the group by establishing credible threats to enforce compliance (e.g., wielding a flamethrower) while demonstrating his willingness to follow the same rules he imposes.
Mitigating Existential Risk The characters recognize that the alien represents an existential risk—not just to them, but to humanity. Their decisions prioritize long-term outcomes over immediate survival. For example, the decision to destroy the base to prevent the alien’s escape reflects a commitment to the global utility function, even at the cost of personal survival.
The Role of Psychological Factors in Rationality The film does not shy away from the psychological toll of high-stakes reasoning under uncertainty. Fear, paranoia, and isolation challenge the researchers’ ability to think clearly. This resonates with real-world rationality, where emotional regulation is essential to avoid biases and maintain clarity in decision-making.
Please can you move the epistemic status and warning to the top? I was excited when I first skimmed this detailed comment, but then I was disappointed :/ (Edit: Thank you!)
I endorse this movie unironically. It is a classic film for tracking what information you have and don’t have, how many possibilities there are, etc.
Also the filmmaker maintains to this day that they left the truth of the matter in the final scene undefined on purpose, so we are spared the logic being hideously hacked-off to suit the narrative and have to live with the uncertainty instead.
Epistemic status: half joking, but also half serious.
Warning: I totally wrote this.
Practical Rationality in John Carpenter’s The Thing: A Case Study
John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) is a masterclass in practical rationality, a cornerstone of effective decision-making under uncertainty—a concept deeply valued by the LessWrong community. The film’s narrative hinges on a group of Antarctic researchers encountering a shape-shifting alien capable of perfectly imitating its hosts, forcing them to confront dire stakes with limited information. Their survival depends on their ability to reason under pressure, assess probabilities, and mitigate catastrophic risks, making the movie a compelling example of applied rationality.
Key Lessons in Practical Rationality:
Updating Beliefs with New Evidence The researchers continually revise their understanding of the alien’s capabilities as they gather evidence. For instance, after witnessing the creature’s ability to assimilate and mimic hosts, they abandon naive assumptions of safety and recalibrate their strategies to account for this new information. This aligns with Bayesian reasoning: beliefs must be updated in light of new data to avoid catastrophic errors.
Decision-Making Under Uncertainty The characters face extreme uncertainty: anyone could be the alien, and any wrong move could result in annihilation. The iconic blood test scene exemplifies this. The test, devised by MacReady, is an ingenious use of falsifiability—leveraging empirical experimentation to distinguish humans from the alien. It demonstrates how rational agents use creativity and empirical tests to reduce uncertainty.
Coordination in Adversarial Environments Cooperation becomes both vital and precarious when trust erodes. The film explores how rational agents can attempt to align incentives despite an adversarial context. MacReady takes control of the group by establishing credible threats to enforce compliance (e.g., wielding a flamethrower) while demonstrating his willingness to follow the same rules he imposes.
Mitigating Existential Risk The characters recognize that the alien represents an existential risk—not just to them, but to humanity. Their decisions prioritize long-term outcomes over immediate survival. For example, the decision to destroy the base to prevent the alien’s escape reflects a commitment to the global utility function, even at the cost of personal survival.
The Role of Psychological Factors in Rationality The film does not shy away from the psychological toll of high-stakes reasoning under uncertainty. Fear, paranoia, and isolation challenge the researchers’ ability to think clearly. This resonates with real-world rationality, where emotional regulation is essential to avoid biases and maintain clarity in decision-making.
Please can you move the epistemic status and warning to the top? I was excited when I first skimmed this detailed comment, but then I was disappointed :/ (Edit: Thank you!)
I endorse this movie unironically. It is a classic film for tracking what information you have and don’t have, how many possibilities there are, etc.
Also the filmmaker maintains to this day that they left the truth of the matter in the final scene undefined on purpose, so we are spared the logic being hideously hacked-off to suit the narrative and have to live with the uncertainty instead.
(FWIW this was my actual best candidate for a movie that would fit, but I remembered so few details that I didn’t want to list it.)